Despite what he might claim, depending on the conversation, it's not in Bastien's nature to be suspicious. As a child he'd have gone anywhere with anyone. He'd have answered any question. He had to learn better, slower than most—and it did take, but only after a fashion. The fear and judgment that turn possibilities into paranoia rest atop his innate curiosity like a mask. They're an outer layer. They come off.

So at the core of it, when he thinks what do you really want and why now, why from me, it's in an open-hearted sort of way. He might as well be wondering what's behind an inauspicious door or where a bird is going. People have their motives; they're rarely about him and so rarely can wound him. He doesn't expect the answer to hurt. But he does wonder.

He says, "Notre mère, les murs, notre père, les pavés," lilting without outright singing—it's from a song mythologizing some cheerfully tragic, patriotic orphans who supposedly formed a line of defense during an ancient footnote of a civil skirmish. "Even if it smacked me around now and then, I have no choice but to love it."

This is not meant as an answer. Not in full. It's more of a disclaimer: it isn't something arising out of pretty views and favorite street vendors. It arose out of the city being what held and fed him. Out of being sung to sleep every night. There's only so much he can show to anyone, and even then, it's like trying to describe a tapestry one thread at a time.

But, alright: "When I was a boy, the man who lived there," with a point up at the upper window of a building across the canal, "had a monkey."